


Traditions

by Flux



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baking, Christmas, Fallen Angel Castiel, Ice Skating, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 13:45:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5668177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flux/pseuds/Flux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Cas discover the joy of Christmas traditions and Dean maybe finds a few of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traditions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueerNerdofCamelot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerNerdofCamelot/gifts).



> I tried to incorporate a little of each prompt so you've got a plethora of Christmas fluff! I hope you enjoy it. Merry belated Christmas!

"It's tradition."

Two words that will haunt Dean until kingdom come. More slippery than the devil's tongue and slick as oil. Things you do because you're _supposed to_ do them, not because you want to or there's any good reason. They're like rules or laws or prophesies. You're stuck. _It's tradition_. They've managed to infest the bunker with Christmas. And not just any Christmas. It's the unholy offspring of the Sears catalog and checkout aisle home decor magazines and its everywhere. There's garlands on every doorway, red bows stuck will-nilly, tinsel up his buttcrack.

The one place that he has summarily banned any sign of the impending holidays is his own bedroom because somethings are sacred to a man and a king-sized memory foam mattress is the altar in Dean's personal temple.

But then he wakes up one day and walks right into it.

Mistletoe.

It's a prank. It has to be a prank. It's just the type of thing that bratty little brothers will do when they think they're being funny, except it isn't, not at all, especially when Cas emerges from his door on the opposite side of the hall, sleepy-eyed and rumpled. 

Dean rips the mistletoe from the ceiling

Cas doesn't even notice. Someone could probably stick a tarantual down Cas' back and he wouldn't notice as long as it was before his second cup of coffee in the morning. The only time Dean sees him before ten is when they've got a hunt.

Which they do. And it's awful for the people with their hearts torn out. Terrible. Really. But Dean is eternally grateful for the chance to escape Sam's relentless holiday cheer. It's even infiltrated his closet.

"What the hell are you wearing?" Dean says just as he walks into the kitchen.

"It's a Christmas sweater. Donna got one for each of us." He points at a lumpy pile sitting at the end of the counter. "You should-"

"No," Dean cuts him off immediately.

" _It's tradition_."

The words grate like nails on chalkboard. "It's _December twenty-third_."

"So that means you'll wear it on Christmas?'

"That is _not_  what that means!" He turns around to storm off, but there's an obstacle in the way. An obstacle bearing coffee. Dean deflates.

"Thanks, Cas."

The angel grunts and shuffles over to the dining room table. Dean follows.

"So," he says once all three of them are gathered. "I figure we leave right after breakfast and we can get there around noon to start some digging on where this werewolf might be."

"Oh yeah, we're not going," Sam interjects blithely.

Dean sees red. This is _not_ okay. Christmas spirit is one thing. Letting innocent people die for the sake of eggnog and caroling is an entirely different thing. He narrows his eyes. Maybe he needs to check for a soul.

"They caught the guy. It was on the news this morning," his brother continues. "Regular, one hundred percent human nutjob ripping people's hearts out with a kitchen knife."

Dean breathes a sigh of relief, and almost immediately groans in disappointment. They're going to be home for the holidays after all. 

* * *

The assault begins almost immediately. Sam somehow conscripts a bemused Castiel to his side and it's nonstop jingly music and fairy lights and cartoon specials. Naturally, Dean takes the most strategic route and decides to hide in his room.

And then the baking starts.

He doesn't realize it at first. When it goes silent, he figures that the two of them have wandered off to bedeck some other part of the bunker with the decades' worth of antiquated ornaments and embellishments they dug out of Men of Letters storage rooms. But then he smells it.

Vanilla. Cinnamon. Cloves.

Dean panics.

Sam and Cas are not allowed in the kitchen for anything other than making sandwiches, coffee, or getting something out of the fridge. Sam has limited microwave privileges. Cas does not. And now, it seems, that the two of them are taking advantage of his seclusion by baking. No. They're attempting to bake.

Dean rushes down the hall, praying that he'll get there in time to rescue the oven from a future of burnt sugar caked to the coils.

When he gets there, it's not as bad as he expects, but only barely. The vanilla is gone, escaping in a river over the side of the counter and into the cracks between the floor tiles. The flour has mounted its own attack against Sam's sweater. Cas is, well Dean isn't sure what exactly Cas is doing with the eggs that necessitates him covering his hands in yolk and gets bits of shell stuck in his hair.

"Get out."

"But-"

"GET. OUT. OF. MY. KITCHEN."

Sam and Cas glance at each other before something devious clicks between their eyes. Simultaneous puppy dog expressions point in his direction.

"There are cookies in the oven," Sam says.

"I am making pie," Cas adds.

Dean looks up at the ceiling, seeking revelation, because God hasn't been around for the big stuff but maybe he'll extend a helping hand in the face of such obvious manipulation. When he looks back down, the vanilla has slowed to a trickle and the oven is beeping.

Sam eagerly opens the door with his big moose mitts and his face crumples into a frown.

"I don't think they're done yet."

Cas leans down next to him to look. He reaches a hand inside and Dean jumps into action

"Not without gloves!" he yelps, because Cas has only been human for a few weeks and hasn't quite grasped the fact that hurting himself comes with permanent consequence now. Dean opens the drawer by the microwave and pulls out a pair of red plaid oven mitts, Claire's idea of a hilarious gift, and squeezes between the two other men.

The oven isn't even hot.

"Sam."

"Yeah?"

"Did you turn on the oven?"

"Of course I did!"

Dean side-eyes his giant moose of a brother.

"Oh."

"The knob on the left is the oven. The knob on the right is the timer."

Sam's face twists into a scowl. "I'd know that if you ever let me use the kitchen."

"Okay," Dean says, ignoring him. He closes the oven with a clang. "You," he points at Sam, "need to shower and stop bringing shame to the entire human species. You," he points at Cas, "are going to finish making the pie _under strict supervision_."

Sam crosses his arms in a huff, releasing a cloud of flour, thus proving Dean's entire point.

Cas lights up like the reindeer nose on his Christmas sweater. Before they can start, though, Dean takes Sam's lumpy sugar cookies out of the oven and puts them in the fridge and sets the oven to preheat. He might not be able to rescue the dough after the fact, but at least he can make sure they're baked properly.

"Alright," he says, clapping his hands together. "First things first. What are the eggs for?"

"The egg wash," Cas explains.

Dean glances at the ball of dough and the unpeeled apples. "You know that's the last step, right?"

"Yes," Cas says, fiddling with the hem of his sweater. "I saw Sam beating his eggs and it looked," he pauses, little frown deepening, "fun."

He says the word like it's in a foreign language, and given that Cas speaks all languages, it's pretty damn foreign. All the air disappears from Dean's sails. Baking may be a precise science, but he'll eat a dozen raw, salty, and dry pies if it means Cas is finally getting the hang of doing things for no other reason than the fact that he wants to.

A horrifying possibility dawns upon him. 

"Did Sam beat his eggs with his _bare hands_?"

"Oh! No." Cas shakes his head, eyes wide. "I, he used a fork. I was just picking out errant pieces of shell and a few, um, got away from me."

Dean sees the fork now, sadly crusted with dry yolk at the side of the cutting board.

"Okay then," Dean says, stepping up next to Cas at the counter. "What do you want to do next."

Cas plucks the recipe from beneath a pile of measuring cups and squints at the direction.

"I believe we should begin peeling the apples."

Dean glances at the dough. What they really should be doing is setting it to chill in the fridge in preparation for pre-baking.

"Is that what you want to do?" he says instead.

Cas thinks about it for half a second. "Yes."

Dean finds them a pair of peelers and hands one to Cas. They stand next to each other companionably as they work through the pile. Cas fumbles a little at first, but he quickly gets the hang of peeling the apples.

The last two weeks since Cas officially fell have been strange. He's been missing Cas for so long that he doesn't know what to do with it now that Cas is here full time. There's a part of him that expects to wake up the next morning to find Cas' room empty, a note left on the nightstand if he's lucky. Heaven and Hell may be finally closed and the Darkness locked away, but if life's taught him anything, it's that when God closes a door on an apocalypse, he opens a window to a whole new shitstorm. Dean glances over at the former angel whose bottom lip is caught between his teeth as he concentrates on creating the perfect, unbroken strip of spiraling apple peel that curls in on itself on the counter top.

He doesn't look like the angel that ripped Dean from the bowels of Hell or the angel that stood alone against the power of an archangel or the angel that sucked out the marrow of Purgatory. He doesn't look like Jimmy Novak, loving husband, father, and seller of radio ads, either. He looks like, Dean can't quite put his finger on it, something different, something new. But still Cas. In a way, Cas has been remade more times than Dean and Sam combined.

Cas holds up the peel, quietly triumphant, satisfaction in his eyes before sticking one end in his mouth, munching away at it as he starts his next apple and Dean can't believe that this is the new them, side by side in the bunker kitchen, warmth at his back from the oven and warmth at his side from Cas.

"So how'd Sam rope you into his Winchester Family Christmas Spectacular?"

"He asked."

Which yeah, does seem like it would work. On Cas at least.

"If, um, this," Dean says, waving his peeler at the tinsel and the holly and the stockings hanging over the stove like the most obvious fire hazards in the world, "we can burn it all if you, you know, don't like it."

Jesus, there really is no subtle way to ask someone if the overly Christ and God and glory-be holiday might trigger bad memories in a fallen angel.

"I like it," Cas says softly. "Christmas is a celebration of family."

Dean's chest tightens. Well when you put it that way, Dean's really been stepping in it with his bah-humbug and his scrooging up the place.

A juice-covered hand falls over his. "Sam is adamant, but I can speak to him. You shouldn't be forced to participate if you don't wish to."

Dean swallows. When he closes his eyes, he can almost trick himself into thinking he can remember his first Christmas with his mother. He conjures up a woman who looks like the one in the photograph on his nightstand, a beautiful tree, and a mountain of presents. In truth, all he has now are memories of a memory, a lingering impression of warmth and safety and joy. A part of him will always be disappointed by Christmas, even though he knows it shouldn't, that he's measuring them against Hallmark commercials and window displays instead of the genuine article. But this isn't about him now, or even Sam, who could have Christmas all by himself, and probably has in the past.

"Nah," he says, forcing a smirk. "Can't unleash Sam on the unsuspecting locals without some supervision."

Besides, maybe it's time that their little family spent their time together doing something happy.

* * *

The cookies are cooling on the stove and the pie crust baking on the top crust. They finished the filling with a truly terrifying amount of spices (but no vanilla) and Cas' crunchy egg wash ended up poured down the sink in favor of cracking a new bowl sans egg shells. 

Dean sends Cas off to the showers while he starts on dinner. They haven't seen hide or hair of Sam since the snow monster disappeared down the hall earlier, which is moderately worrying, but Dean's been locking his room every since December fourteenth when the madness began so he's not too too worried.

It isn't until he's got the pie set on its final bake, tortillas warming in the steamer, meat and beans simmering in the saucepan, and he's calling the two oompaloompas down to dinner that he sees it. There, hanging right outside the kitchen, is another sprig of mistletoe.

He rips it down with a scowl just as Cas appears at the end of the hall.

"What's that?" Cas asks, and there's no way, _no way_ , that Sam hasn't explained that particular tradition to Cas, so Dean lies.

"Nothing," he says. "Garbage." And he tosses it away like it is.

Cas squints at him, not entirely convinced, so Dean resorts to another tried and true distraction technique: misdirection.

"Hey! I was thinking, after dinner, we could drive into town to look at lights."

Cas' head cocks to one side and it's so familiar and endearing that Dean has to bite his cheek to keep his smile from going all gooey.

"Is this another tradition?"

"You bet your ass it is."

* * *

 

 Christmas Eve brings dark clouds and incessant rain. It also brings Charlie.

"What's up, bitches!"

"Oh thank god, you're here," Dean breathes out in relief. "I need backup."

"We fighting another war?" Charlie asks, laughing.

"Yes."

He grabs her by the elbow and drags her into the living room where Sam and Cas are sorting the cans of Faux-Snow. By color. _Real_  snow does _not_  come in different colors.

"Oh cool! Aerosol snow. I've always wanted to try this stuff."

Dean claws at his face.

This is the crack team that's stopped the oldest evil in existence.

"You want blue or white?" Charlie asks, holding up a can of each.

"All of them!" Dean says, a little too shrilly. "I want all of them. In the dumpster. Out back."

"Don't be such a sourpuss," she says, tossing him a can that he just barely catches in time to avoid a black eye.

"It _stains_ ," Dean points out for the third time.

"No need to line that delicate brow, my loyal handmaiden, I gave you a can of white."

* * *

Two hours later, they're all collapsed on the couch in front of the silent television. It has to be the shock. 

"I think," Sam ventures first, "that we may have gone a little overboard."

"Yes," Cas agrees.

The trauma of the fake-snowing spree has finally caused their brains to reboot, allowing sanity to return, but it's too late. The damage is done. The bunker is blue.

* * *

The Plan, as Dean is certain how Sam thinks of it, is to go ice-skating at the town rink for the rest of the day. It's going to be crowded and hectic and horrible, but Dean doesn't say any of that out loud because he's _trying_  here and he let himself complain all morning. But then it's just him and Cas going because Sam and Charlie have volunteered to stay behind and clean up the blue snow before the staining sets in any further than it already has. Dean almost says they should just cancel the skating and all stay here to clean up the mess, but then Cas tells him that he's actually looking forward to going to the rink and Dean leaves Sam and Charlie to it. It is their fault, after all. 

The town has gone back to being plain old Lebanon in the day time instead of the winter wonderland of lights at night. The signs of festivity still abound.

They rent a pair of skates from the rental stand and Dean straps his on like combat boots before making sure Cas' are tight enough that he doesn't twist his ankle if his slips.

"Have you skated before?" Cas asks him.

"Once," he says. It was back when he was still in high school. It had been a date, sort of, or at least as close to one as teenage Dean Winchester ever got to one. Grown-up Dean Winchester for that matter as well. He'd fallen on his ass so many times and gotten bruises in so many new and interesting places that he'd destroyed any chances of getting lucky. "Have you?"

"No."

Which makes it just that much more unfair that Cas glides off like Michelle Kwan and Dean is stuck shuffling his way along the barrier. After a while, he just gives up and leans against the wall, digging his picks into the ice to keep from sliding away. He doesn't mean to, but he ends up watching Cas as he weaves his way around the rink. His face is flushed red from the exertion and the cold, and a wide gummy smile stretches across his lips. He doesn't do anything fancy, none of the turns or jumps of the trained skaters in the roped off center of the rink, but he looks like he belongs on skates. On ice, he flies.

After a while, Dean loses him in the crowd, no longer able to spot his bright blue knit cap in the sea of people. It would be the perfect time for something to attack. They're weaponless, separated, and Dean's practically useless in skates. He could maybe, at most, manage to fall on the monster if it came at him.

"Cas!" he calls out, and a bunch of people turn to look at him, but none are the right one.

"Cas!" he tries again, a little louder, a little more desperation seeping into his voice.

Dean had told him to leave his cellphone in the car, because he didn't want him losing it if he fell. How could he be so _stupid_? It's been less than a month since they locked Amara away for good. There were still a hundred other threats that could take down a freshly fallen angel lost in a sea of civilians.

"Cas!" he tries one last time.

"Dean!"

His heart nearly stops with relief as his eyes lock onto Cas' ugly winter coat and tousled hair. His hat dangles precariously out of his pocket.

Cas is also hurtling towards him at a million miles per hour.

The impact makes their entire half of the rink wall rattle and Dean thinks he can feel his spine digging into his belly button, but Cas is pressed up against him, safe in his arms, and Dean spares a moment to squeeze him a little tighter before letting him go.

"I apologize," Cas says, a little out of breath. "I didn't know how to stop."

* * *

Dean follows Cas out of the car and towards the door that went from the garage to the bunker. Cas is carrying the giant box for the skates Dean bought for him. Dean is carrying a tray of coffee from that frou frou place Sam likes for their double shot soy chai latte. 

Dean got his coffee black. Maybe with a little bit of frothed milk. A shot of hazelnut. Some cinnamon. Definitely not anymore than a dollop of whipped cream. Shut up. Underneath all of that it was black coffee.

Cas holds the door open for him with his foot, smiling softly, which makes about a dozen things happen to Dean's internal calibration that he doesn't like to put a name to. But then Charlie is there. And Charlie is kissing Cas.

Dean stops in his tracks. The nice part of his brain reminds him: lesbian. The not so nice part of his brain reminds him: she said Cas was dreamy.

Then the kiss is over. The nice part of his brain points out: just a peck on the lips. The not so nice part: CHARLIE KISSED CAS.

She glances at him, far too innocent to be unpracticed. "What? It's tradition." She points up.

Mistletoe.

No. Nuh-uh.

"Take that down before I hurt someone," he growls before pushing through them both and his good mood is officially gone.

* * *

It gets worse. He finds it _everywhere_. The gym, the library, the goddamned shower room. He summarily dismantles it all and dumps it in a corner of his room so that it can't be re-used against him. He starts to wonder if all of their credit cards have been maxed out buying the stuff. 

He doesn't get all of them. 

Sam and Cas get caught under the sprig in the hallway. Cas' face looks tiny cupped in his brother's hands and jesus, Cas looks so _happy_  afterwards. Every time it happens, with Sam, with Charlie, Cas walks away with a little smile on his face and that just makes the ache in Dean's gut ten times worse.

* * *

It happens. 

Sam and Cas have both retired for the night, heading back to their rooms after the end of Home Alone. Charlie is passed out on the couch, so Dean stays behind a few minutes to pull off her shoes and tuck her in.

He's yawning as he heads down the hall to his room, so he doesn't see it, dangling innocuously between his and Cas' room, until it's too late. Cas comes out of his door with his toothbrush and toothpaste held in one hand and Dean is left staring dumbly beneath the mistletoe.

Cas glances up and knows, _knows_  that Dean's seen it. That Dean could kiss him. It would be easy, especially now with Charlie and Sam safely away, just the two of them here to witness it. He could tilt his down just a little bit, slot their lips together, and Cas would let him. Cas would even welcome it. _Family_ , he'd said. That's what Christmas traditions were all about. But Dean can't. He just can't.

Something like hope in Cas' eyes wanes by the second, until Cas smiles wryly and reaches up to pluck the mistletoe from the rafters and lays it in Dean's limp hand.

"Merry Christmas, Dean," he says simply, and heads to the bathroom.

* * *

Dean wakes up on Christmas morning to the smell of pancakes. There's a moment of panic before he remembers that Charlie is here. Sure enough, when Dean makes his way to the kitchen, Sam and Cas are relegated to the relatively safer task of pouring milk and orange juice and coffee while Charlie mans the griddle. 

"Merry Christmas, sleepyhead," she announces cheerfully before handing him a plate stacked high.

"Merry Christmas," Dean answers back gruffly, and is grateful when Sam doesn't say anything. His brother is still grinning when he makes it to the table, though.

"Merry Christmas," Cas says, an echo of his words last night, and Dean swallows down a lump in his throat.

"Merry Christmas," he replies.

"Happy Hannukah!" Sam says, just to be a little shit. "Actually it's not Hannukah anymore. We should do that next year."

"Ooooo, yes!" Charlie agrees. "Eight days of presents instead of one!"

Dean pauses as he pours syrup over his plate. "Presents?"

"Oh, they're just these things people give each other on Christmas. Usually in wrapped in colorful paper, maybe topped off with a bow," Sam explains oh so helpfully.

"Blow me," Dean tells him, in the spirit of the season. "No one told me we were doing presents."

"That's because when I tried to talk to you about Christmas, you put your fingers in your ears and sang House of the Holy until I went away!"

"Now _that's_  a Christmas classic," Dean announces to the table before shoving pancake into his mouth. It's delicious. Charlie has officially earned kitchen privileges.

"Well," Charlie says, pilfering the bottle of syrup, "you don't get to open my present until you give me yours."

"Hey!"

"It's okay, Dean," Cas says solemnly, "you may still open mine."

Dean is struck dumb for a second. "You got me a present?"

"Of course I did," Cas says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. 

Right, of course. It's tradition.

The same theme carries them out of the kitchen and into the living room where there's an honest to God pine tree that still smells like fresh sap, a blanket of Faux-Snow around its base and heavily ringed around its branches. There's even an LED-lit star at the top.

Sam goes first. He hands them each a box. They're about the same size, about five inch cubes, each wrapped in a different color of shiny paper with a bow stuck to the top. 

"Open them together!" Sam instructs, as excited as any five year old unwrapping his presents on Christmas morning.

They tear into them on command, unearthing the neat cardboard boxes at around the same time. Charlie gets hers open first and pulls out a Hermione ornament. Castiel gets Constantine and Dean gets Batman.

It's made of carved wood, painted, lacquered, and strung with a silky black ribbon. There's a logo burned into the bottom of Batman's boot.

_Lee Bonilla_

_Nacogdoches, TX_

Sam must have picked this up weeks ago, days after Cas fell, during that vampire hunt in Texas. Dean is stunned that he was thinking about this even then, and he remembers now a comment made in passing, right after they averted yet another end of the world.

_"Maybe we can have something normal now. Just until this all starts again. We could do Christmas."_

_"Yeah, Sammy. That sounds good."_

When he looks back up from the figurine, Sam is holding his own. Superman. 

"I though we could all hang them on the tree together," he says. "It's something Jess said she did with her family. All their tree ornaments were given to each other by family members, so none of them matched, but there was a story to each of them, and memories of lost loved ones, and I just thought." Sam swallows and there are tears in the corners of his eyes. "I just thought it'd be a nice tradition."

Dean feels his chest well up and his eyes burn. He doesn't hesitate when Sam holds out a handful of wire hooks. He waits for Sam to hang his ornament up and before stepping up next to his brother and puts his on the next branch over. It doesn't take long for Cas and Charlie to do the same, the four figurines dangling in a lopsided row across the center of the tree.

"Guys," Sam laughs, a hitch in his voice. "That's not how you decorate a tree."

"Yeah?" Dean says, throwing an arm around his brother's shoulder. "Well maybe we can break tradition just this once."

* * *

Charlie got them a group present slash house warming gift slash gift to herself in the form of an Xbox, a Wii, and a box full of games and controllers. 

"No monster games," she promises.

Cas gets them all socks. Dean's pretty sure it's supposed to be a joke.

His are thick and a rich brown and perfectly respectable except for the reindeer hoofprints on the soles. Even then they're inconspicuous compared to the rainbow snowflakes on Sam's and the bulging eyes of Charlie's Santa socks.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know they would look like that," Cas apologizes.

"I like them," Charlie announces. "They can scare off Krampus."

Dean meets Sam's eyes across the pile of wrapping paper and they both shudder.

Sam and Cas and Charlie start to set up the gaming systems, or more accurately, Charlie sets up the gaming system and Sam and Cas try to help more than hinder, but eventually end up sorting through the games and reading the backs. It doesn't sit right, with Dean, that he's gotten so many gifts but is the only one who didn't give any.

He leaves them to it with the excuse that he's going to put his socks away, but as soon as he's out of sight, he begins his search. He knows what he can give Sam and he goes for that first. Charlie isn't that much harder since she's still dangerously fascinated by all things supernatural. It's Cas that stumps him. Technically, he's already given him a present the day before, so whatever he gives him now has to be better, but what does he have in his room that's better than a pair of skates?

He's gone through his bookshelf and his closet before he sees it, lying on his nightstand from the night before. Dean walks over and picks it up, its green leaves slightly withered, but its berries and that dumb ribbon still intact.

He doesn't bother wrapping anything. He doesn't have any paper big enough to wrap Sam's present in anyways, so he strides out of his room to play Santa.

"Heads up!" he calls as he makes his way into the television lounge where they've managed to get the Wii working and are fastidiously constructing miniature selves on the home screen.

He drops Sam's gift in his lap and laughs at the face Sam makes when he sees what he's gotten. It's a cookbook, one of the many that Dean's picked up at various garage sales he's driven by since he started cooking at the bunker.

"Everywomans cookbook," Sam reads out. "The A B C of healthy home cooking."

"Merry Christmas, Sammy! Learn something."

Charlie gets her present handed to her, mostly because it's sharp.

"It's a kila. It's got silver inlaid in the handle and and iron blade. Blessed by a Buddhist priest. Just a prick will kill a belu in three seconds flat."

"Oh, shiny."

"Also sharp," Dean warns her. 

"I know how to handle a blade," she retorts.

Right. Oz.

And finally.

"Cas," he says, and the ex-angel looks at him with open excitement and expectation. "Can you, uh, can you come here for a sec?"

"Of course."

Cas follows him out into the hallway and away from the door so that they're out of sight of Sam and Charlie.

Dean's hand sweats from where it is in his pocket.

"I, uh, I wanted to give you this," he says, yanking his hand out and presenting it palm up. The mistletoe is a little worse for wear, but recognition lights up in Cas' eyes. "I, uh, I want you to have it."

Cas' eyes are wide when he looks up at Dean. "You're sure."

It's not a question, but Dean answers anyways. "Yeah, uh, I am. I want this."

Cas steps in close, laying one hand over Dean's, pressing the plant between their palms.

"I want this, too."

The Heavens break apart to reveal golden light and choirs of singing angels, or at least that's what it feels like when Dean finally leans down.


End file.
